Michelle Bachmann…What, What, What Are You Doing?

To anyone who reads this blog even remotely regularly- – -anyone who actually follows what it says- – -I am just going to take a moment here to apologize for the gap between my last post and this one. As feminists have been learning the hard way for decades, when one is NOT just sitting home figuring out what is for dinner each night (and I am NOT dissing stay at home moms here, for the record, because I can only imagine how hard that can be, especially with little kids), one tends to get caught up with a myriad of other obligations and suddenly blogging seems like it may not be so easy to get around to.

That said, as my apology, I am giving you a post that I hope will make you laugh, as it is about Michele Bachmann and some of the things that she has said. (If you really like Michele Bachmann, I advise that you wait until Thursday, when I hope to update this blog again, to catch up with The Radical Idea…but that said, I’m not here to slander her, just highlight some of her more interesting quotes). If you’re not already familiar with my feelings about Representative Bachmann, take a look at The Marriage Vow and my commentary on it from earlier on this blog.

So I went through and looked up some truly fantastic Michele Bachmann quotes, and selected some of my favorites. Here you go:

“Normalization of gayness through desensitization. Very effective way to do this with second graders is take a picture of ‘The Lion King’ for instance, and the teacher says to the students, ‘Did you know the man who wrote the music for this movie was gay?’ The message is, I’m better at what I do, because I’m gay”

What? Where did that leap of logic come from? And who has ever said that we should be teaching about homosexuality in elementary schools? Most proponents of desensitization through education have focused on secondary schools, where students are often already aware homosexuality exists and teasing and discrimination on this basis become issues…not the second grade.

”Does that mean that someone’s 13-year-old daughter could walk into a sex clinic, have a pregnancy test done, be taken away to the local Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, have their abortion, be back and go home on the school bus? That night, mom and dad are never the wiser.”

I actually had to look up the context of that one. Here is what happened: MB claimed that a healthcare reform bill would enable school-based clinics to facilitate abortions, which (in addition to being untrue) is kind of absurd. I would get into the total inaccuracy of that, but Politifact.com, which does fact-checking on all of things that politicians and news organizations say, beat me to it, so I’ll just leave you with this: 1. What in the name of all that is delicious but fattening is a “sex clinic” and 2. If I just skipped class to get an abortion, my parents would be getting a phone call about my lack of attendance…so if parents really are none the wiser we have some education issues that need discussing here too…

“You have a teacher talking about his gayness. (The elementary school student) goes home then and says “Mom! What’s gayness? We had a teacher talking about this today.” The mother says “Well, that’s when a man likes other men, and they don’t like girls.” The boy’s eight. He’s thinking, “Hmm. I don’t like girls. I like boys. Maybe I’m gay.” And you think, “Oh, that’s, that’s way out there. The kid isn’t gonna think that.” Are you kidding? That happens all the time. You don’t think that this is intentional, the message that’s being given to these kids? That’s child abuse.”

Okay, there are a lot of problems with this one too. There are so many problems with it that it’s just hilarious. She said this out loud. She did so at a National Education Conference. Elementary school is still not the forum in which we want to open the discussion about homosexuality. Parents are better at explaining things to their kids. And if anyone is at fault in MB’s example…it is the PARENT. So I’m just going to leave this one with the shortest but sweetest critique that I can give, the one I love using when there is nothing more to say on the matter: citation needed.

“President Obama, in a stunning, shocking level of power, now just recently told all private insurance companies, ‘You must offer the morning-after abortion pill, because I said so. And it must be free of charge.’

She said that last night, actually, in regards to HHS’s verdict that contraception must be available without additional copay. That is not the same as “free of charge” because these people are already paying for coverage. On top of that, the morning after pill is still considered emergency contraception, in that it prevents the egg from being fertilized or from planting itself in the uterus. It does NOT terminate an existing pregnancy. Medicines that do accomplish this are NOT covered under the HHS standards.

Plus, seriously? Morning after “abortion pill”? It’s a shame she doesn’t know the difference between those two types of medicine.

There are a LOT more than this, but I’m actually only going to list one more. Don’t worry, though. I saved my actual favorite for last.

“It isn’t that some gay will get some rights. It’s that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children. Because our K-​12 public school system, of which ninety per cent of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality.”

The above comment was made on the subject of GAY MARRIAGE. Last I checked, gay marriage is not fundamentally linked to the education system. There is just no warrant or link story (to use debate jargon here) to explain how she came to this conclusion.

I don’t even really know how to address this. “Perhaps you should try it”? “Schools will begin teaching homosexuality”? “Everyone else will lose rights”? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? This is not how rights work! For heaven’s sake, if Cady in “Mean Girls” can figure out that telling someone they’re ugly will not make you prettier, and calling someone stupid will not make you smarter, surely our elected officials can figure out that keeping other people from having equal rights will not give you more rights…right?

I’m not sure what’s funnier: that Michele Bachmann says these things…or that she is this uninformed about things and still believes herself to be qualified to run this country.

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Randi Saunders is the primary author of The Radical Idea. She is also an activist, a writer, and a researcher. Click on the displayed profile picture for more information on Randi and The Radical Idea.